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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4251692" data-attributes="member: 13892">In addition to these two things, staff should also be attentive. Most game stores that I have visited don't have any of these three things going for them (and, rightfully, they went out of business). The issue I frequently see at game stores is that the owners/operators are undoubtedly fans and gamers but have little or no retail experience. It would be nice if all of the bad game stores in the world could honestly blame their failure on internet retailers undercutting them but, IME, that claim is just an excuse for otherwise crappy service or business practices. I can think of dozens of stores who make some very vital mistakes when it comes to day to day business. Here are two of the most commonly encountered bad business decisions. . . Store owners who stock inventory based on personal taste, rather than market interest or customer requests.I'm glad that Joe Shopkeep really likes Rolemaster* but choosing to stock only (or even primarily) Rolemaster* in a world where more than 90% of consumers are playing D&D is a foolish business decision. It may be Joe's store but "I stock what I like!" doesn't produce sales unless what you like is what consumers like, too. I have heard dozens of shop owners over the years complain that they were losing business (or going out of business) because the market was bad -- but one quick look at their shelves would tell the real story. Typically, they had craploads of product -- for games that nobody but themselves and their buddies cared about. I recall, for example, a shop in Kansas that was heavily invested in DP9 material to the exclusion of almost all other games (including D&D, whcih they did not stock). Store owners who stock a myriad of supplements for a popular game but only order one copy of the core book every other month or so.The number of core books sold determines the number of supplements that people will buy, as only people with the core books for a given game can generally use the supplements. When you sell a core book for a given game, you're creating a potential repeat customer. It doesn't matter if Joe Shopkeep has a mountain of sourcebooks for D&D if he has only stocked and sold two copies of the PHB in the last year. He has only created two potential buyers for the sourcebooks due to shoddy inventory control and has nobody to blame but himself when only those two people buy supplements for D&D from his store. I cannot tell you how many times I chose not to invest in a gameline that I was interested in at a game store because that store didn't carry all of the required books in stock <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />[/list]*I'm not picking on Rolemaster here, I just needed the name of a game line that comprises less than 10% of the current RPG market. You can substitute the name "Rolemaster" with the title of any game that isn't D&D.</blockquote>

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